Just as Maurice, recognizing the responsibility of creation, had, at the touch of his son's little hand, felt the tremor of a moral conception, so now Eleanor, barren so long! felt the pangs of a birth of spiritual responsibility: "I didn't make him happy, so--Oh, my poor Maurice, it was my fault!"... But of course this divine self-forgetfulness in self-reproach, was as feeble as any new-born thing. When it stirred, and uttered little elemental sounds--"my fault, my fault"--she forgot the wrong he had done her, in seeing the wrong he had done himself.... "Oh, my Maurice--my Maurice!" But most of the time she did not hear this frail cry of the sense of sin! She thought entirely and angrily of herself; she said, over and over, that she was going to leave him. She was absorbed in hideous and poignant imaginings, based on that organic curiosity which is experienced only by the woman who meditates upon "the other woman." When these visions overwhelmed her, she said she wouldn't leave him--she would hold him! She wouldn't give him up to that frightful creature, whom he--kissed.... "Oh, my God! He _kisses_ her!" No; she wouldn't give him up; she would just accuse him; just tell him she knew he had been false; tell him there was no use lying about it! Then, perhaps, say she would forgive him?... Yes; if he would promise to throw the vile woman over, she would forgive him. She did not, of course, reflect that forgiveness is not a thing that can be promised; it cannot be manufactured. It comes in exact proportion as we love the sinner more and self less.
And forgiveness is not forgetfulness! It is more love.
Eleanor did not know this. So, except for those occasional cooling and divine moments of blaming herself, she scorched and shriveled in the flames of self-love. And as usual, she was speechless. There were many of these silent hours (which were such a matter of course to Maurice that he never noticed them!) before she gathered herself together, and decided that she would not leave him. She would fight! How? "Oh, I _can't_ think!" she moaned. So those first days passed--days of impotent determinations, which whirled and alternated, and contradicted each other.
Once Maurice, glancing at her over his newspaper at breakfast, thought to himself, "She hasn't said a word since she got up! Poor Eleanor!..." Then he remembered how he had once supposed these silences of hers were full of things too lovely and profound for words! He frowned, and read the sporting page, and forgot her silences, and her, too. But he did not forget Jacky. "I'll buy the kid a ball," he was thinking....